A comprehensive behind-the-scenes look at the making of the C7.

We are now intimate with the 2014 Corvette Stingray. Yep, Stingray. The historic moniker is not being reserved, as we previously proposed, for a later de-powered model, but goes on the base car. And now we know far more than its name. We’ve gazed upon its inner organs, examined its bones, and touched its skin. It all looks extremely promising, and makes the dramatic departure from the C6 that we projected in our January cover story.

Prior to its reveal earlier this year at Detroit’s North American International Auto Show, Chevrolet raised the veil slightly higher, providing limited access to a full-scale exterior model, a mock-up of the interior, the aluminum space frame, and many other components. More important, Car and Driver was granted eight hours with the engineers, designers, and specialists who were finally free to speak on the record about what they’ve been doing for the past three and a half years. When PR pulled the secrecy cork, the experts ­bubbled over with enthusiasm and details.

The new Stingray puts chief engineer Tadge Juechter’s stamp on Corvette legacy as firmly as the 1984 C4 did Dave McLellan’s and the ’97 C5 did Dave Hill’s. There will be base (Stingray) and Z51 models at launch this fall, and Juechter has packed the car with high-end drivetrain, aerodynamic, and material technologies, giving every C7 an aluminum structure, carbon-fiber hood and roof panels, a composite sandwich floor, and the new 450-hp small-block V-8. Juechter’s been working on Corvette for nearly 20 years, starting as the total vehicle integration engineer on the C5. He was assistant chief on the C6 and got the top job in mid-2006. The C6 was meant to have a shorter run, with C7 development commencing in 2007, but the project stalled, so Juechter stayed busy freshening the C6 with programs including the ZR1 and 427 convertible. Here’s what he and other key members of the C7 team had to say about the new car:

What was it like while the C7 was in a holding pattern?

Juechter:

We’d get started, then stopped. Started again, then stopped. As GM moved toward bankruptcy, we kept getting stopped, postponed, and then after bankruptcy we felt like we were on good footing. The Treasury Department looked at the total portfolio of vehicles and quite honestly there were some Corvette fans amongst the consultants and at Treasury. When they saw that it made money . . . they saw that it would be good for everybody to get rolling on the Corvette.

Is this car a more dramatic departure than envisioned pre-bankruptcy, because it's coming later?

Juechter:

We wanted a big upgrade, more like the change from C4 to C5 than the evolution from C5 to C6. That was always in the plan. As we got into it, it turned out to be even bigger than we thought. We thought we could take today’s aluminum frame and tweak it. It turns out we had to scrap the whole thing and start over, the technologies had moved on so far. Everything’s so highly integrated that once you take one thing it telegraphs into ­others and you can’t just mandate your way in. You’ve gotta say, “Y’know what? We need a blank sheet of paper.”

Right: Ryan Vaughn, Interior Design Manager.

What should people notice looking at the car?

Kirk Bennion, Design Manager:

It starts at the front, because it’s not a bottom-breather [with a horizontal cooling air intake under the nose] anymore. We found that bottom-breathers don’t really work all that well when you start to see the speeds that our cars are seeing on tracks. Before we even started the rest of the program, we were having offline meetings about changing the CRFM [condenser/radiator/fan module] position. Instead of leaning the radiator back, we leaned it forward, taking a cue from our race team. Leaning it forward allows us to force-feed the air in, and then dump it out over the top of the hood. This enables the front-end architecture to have more downforce inherently. Now, half the air goes over the top and less than half is spilling out through the sides. That is a big win for us in moving this car to the next level.

John Bednarchik, Aerodynamics Performance Engineer:

Also coming from the way the race team does it, we have coolers for the transmission and differential mounted at the rear. Each is located in a lower outboard corner, with exits in the rear fascia. The air goes in through the inlet that you can see on the top of the quarter-panel and is ducted directly to a cooler. On the driver’s side is the trans oil cooler; the passenger side is the differential cooler.

Bennion:

They’re not just aesthetic things that we bolt on. The hood air extractor’s vanes are shaped and angled to manage airflow, and they tip down as they go back. Another example: Starting with the ’56 model, the Corvette always had side coves, and we can’t imagine not having those. But even there, we’ve made them functional. John and I have measured air coming through there, and it is relieving underhood pressure and lowering the Cd of the car.